The Jay-Blog

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few.

The true purpose of Zen is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes. Zen practice is to open up our small mind.

Time constantly goes from past to present and from present to future. This is true, but it is also true that time goes from future to present and from present to past.

If your mind is related to something outside itself, that mind is a small mind, a limited mind. If your mind is not related to anything else, then there is a dualistic understanding in the activity of your mind.

You should not be bothered by your mind. You should rather be grateful fo rthe weds, because eventually they will enrich your practice.

The point we emphasize is strong confidence in our original nature.

Schools That Learn by Peter

Schools That Learn by Peter Senge & friends, reviewed elsewhere.

yesterday i was shopping at

yesterday i was shopping at peet's coffee. on the counter was a 1/2 pound sack of jamaican blue mountain coffee. having sampled a pound of this rare, luscious coffee when i moved to california in 1974, i figured it would make a nice gift. then i noticed the price -- $39.99! whoa. no coffee beans rate that level of tariff. in '74 i paid $5 for half a pound of blue mountain beans at the farmer's market in el lay.

this got me thinking about how values change over time. money, sure. that's inflation. but also human values. organizational values. like trying to preserve the HP Way fifty years later. or clinging to command and control when even the military is poised to give it up. or only accounting for hard assets when soft assets have become more valuable. it's foolish to follow business traditions that date from before the PC, the net, ecological consciousness, and slow rates of growth.

by the way, the $5 of 1974 is equivalent to $17.99 today. the price of jamaican coffee has significantly outpaced inflation.

Human Clock

Human Clock

TIMELINES History and Art Timelines

TIMELINES

History and Art Timelines
Explore the past through this multi-disciplinary look at the chronology of historical events in relation to artistic milestones.
http://transcript.simplenet.com/arttimeline/histart.htm

Timeline: A Media History Project
This timeline Web site represents a major undertaking for its producers and a bona fide treasure for teachers and other Web surfers. The project compiles major historical events in world history in a tidy chronological format, from 3500 BCE to the present.
http://www.mediahistory.com/time/timeline.html

Western Civilization Chronology
Delve through the history of Western Civilization, from the prehistoric times of the Hominids and Mesopotamia to the American Cold War, which culminated in 1989.
http://campus.northpark.edu/history/WebChron/WestCiv/WestCiv.html

THE NATURE OF TIME by

THE NATURE OF TIME
by Humberto Maturana

The awarenes that the notion of time arises as an abstraction from the coherences of the experiences of the observer that he or she uses as an explanatory notion is not a problem. What becomes a problem in the long run, is the unaware adoption of the notion of time as an explanatory principle that is accepted as a matter of course giving to it a trascendental ontological status

the foundations of the notion of time in any domain rests on the biology of the observer, not on the domain of physics which is a domain of explanations of a particular kind of experiential coherences of the observer.

Experience arises spontaneously literally out of nothing, or, if we wish, from chaos, from a domain about which we can say nothing which does not arise from the coherences of our experiences. This that I say is valid for any domain of experiences, be this life, physics, quantum physics, human relations, ... All these different domains of experiences are experiential domains lived as domains of explanations of our experiences with our experiences. But our experiences are not disordered, they arise coherent as the arise in us from nothingness. So, we exist in this wonderful experiential situation in which we as observers that exist in the present, are the source of everything, even of that which we may treat in the coherences of our experiences as observers as entities that through their operation give rise to the operation of observing and the explainig of their occurrence in a closed domain of explanations. The great temptation is to transform the abstractions of the coherences of our experiences that we distinguish with notions such as reality, existence, reason, space consciousness ... or time, into explanatory principles.

Got it?

Presencing: Learning From the Future

Presencing: Learning From the Future As It Emerges Abstract

An important insight gained from some of the more recent projects in member companies of the Society for Organizational Learning has led to the distinction between two different sources or processes of organizational learning: one that is based on reflecting the experiences of the past (Type I) and a second source, one that is grounded in sensing and enacting emerging futures (Type II). Each of these processes is based on a different temporal source of learning and requires managers to work with fundamentally different learning cycles.

The temporal source of Type I learning is the past, or, to be more precise, the coming into presence of the past–learning revolves around reflecting on experiences of the past. All Kolb-type learning cycles are variations of this type of learning (Kolb 1984). Their basic sequence is action, concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and action again (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: The Kolb Type Learning Cycle (Learning From the Experiences of the Past)

The temporal source of Type II learning is the future, or to be more precise, the coming into presence of the future. Type II learning is based on sensing and embodying emerging futures rather than re-enacting the patterns of the past. The sequence of activites in this learning process is seeing, sensing, presencing, and enacting (see Figure 2).

Fig. 2: The Other Learning Cycle (Learning From Emerging Futures)

While OD and organizational learning have been mainly concerned with how to build, nurture, and sustain Type I learning processes (Argyris, 1992; Schein, 1987; Senge et al, 1994), some more recent experiences suggest that today’s business environment presents most companies with challenges that require a new source and process of learning. These challenges are concerned with how to compete under the conditions of the new economy–that is, how to learn from a reality that is not yet embodied in manifest experience.

In dealing with the new economy challenge, Type I learning is no longer effective as the single source of learning, because the previous experiences embodied in the leadership team are no longer relevant to the challenges at hand. And the experiences that would be of relevance are not yet embodied in the experience base of the leadership team. The issue for management is how to learn from experience when the experience that matters most is the not-yet-embodied experience of the future.

Correction: A Picture is Worth

Correction: A Picture is Worth 84.1 Words

The information content of a visual program (or any diagram) might be more dependent on the author than on properties of the notation. It still seems plausible that this is the case, but future experiments must be more cautious in controlling for experimental demand factors.

...a picture is worth 84.1 words.

This may turn out to

This may turn out to be, well, duh!, but while making breakfast this morning it occurred to me that there's no such thing as standing still in time. The universe is happening, with you or without you, and what feels like being immobile is actually swimming more slowly than the current of events. Instead of the Newtonian-world choice of taking action or not, the issue is whether to stay with the current or get ahead a few strokes or let it wash over you.